The Tall man
by Jack-Jumper
Summary: Sometimes...the evil things you fear, are the ones that leave you alone. It's the ones that you try to forget, that come back to haunt you.
1. Alice

**Chapter One:**

There's something living in my backyard. I'm not sure what it is. Sometimes I hear it in the middle of the night, playing with the windmill in front of my window. I don't dare open the curtains. I'm afraid. But I hear it, tiny footsteps with a wide gait climbing up the metal framing with sounds so different from the clackity-clack of the windmills blades. The windmill shouldn't be working though.

We had tied it up with rope. It doesn't make a sound in the day and the rope stays taught. But in the night all existence of the rope vanishes as the owner of those tiny footsteps continues to play with it, again and again with that clackity-clack, clackity-clack. The windmill has such a stark contrast against my house, painted with light yellows and flowerly indigos. The windmill is brown, rusting, blackening. When we first moved to the house everything had looked so different and run down. There had been rotting trees and the smell of dead things.

When the doors of the cottage next door had been opened there were snakes on the floor, trampled and crushed. The only one that had survived was the biggest, its hollowed skin had been left behind hanging from a hole in the ceiling like a welcome banner. We cleaned up the bodies of the dead snakes and placed them in a bag, intending to take them to the tip the next day. The bag was gone the next morning. We laughed about it, of course we did. People steal garbage all the time. But why didn't they take anything else we'd placed nearby? The old garden stool, or the plant boxes? That stinking bag with its rotting contents was all they took. The windmill was not the only thing rusting on our property. There was the shed, the wide old shed that could fit more cars than we would ever own in our lifetime.

Iron beams and rusty corrugated walls, I liked to take a stick and run alongside enjoying the dull metal thumps, getting to the end and jumping up to hit one of the beams with its higher pitched ding. But when I finished my play, as I walked away I thought I heard the same sounds again, like my game echoing back.

Or someone was copying me.

I played the game more after that, listening intently for the echo, or trying to catch the somebody who seemed to want to play, but whenever I leapt out at the noise growing closer down the wall, there was nothing but silence. It was when I grew tired of the game that the windmill began. Every night, those tiny footsteps and then that clackity-clack. I could never get used to the sound, but nobody else seemed to hear it. It was only ever me, until we rented the cottage next door out to a newlywed couple. During their stay things were quiet and I found rest. It was then our new neighbor's dog disappeared.

Our property is on a slope of a valley, bush land on one side and rainforest on the other where the creek runs. It's not a scary place, it shouldn't have to be. The road is a long one and the land-scapes changes drastically the further you go. There are a lot of places for a dog to hide, but even after all those weeks, our neighbors' never gave up hope. I was the one that found it. As I went exploring in the bush land up the hill from our house, in the small dam hidden from view, there was a long metal pipe sticking out on the shore. The dog had been skewered.

With putrid entrails hanging out and dangling into the water, its mouth hung open wide with a tongue torn in two. It wasn't the sight of the dog's body that scared me though. It was what I saw in the mud. A single pair of tiny footprints. Weeks later, our neighbors' wife would come to tell us they were moving. I listened from my room as she sobbed to my parents. Something was disturbing her here and she didn't know what.

It wasn't just the discovery of the dog, but something else she couldn't describe. It made her feel unwell and unable to work. My parents weren't sure, but they nodded sympathetically and said they'd help them pack the next day. It was that night I felt that something. It made my throat dry and thirst for water. I stumbled into the kitchen and turned on the light. Through the half-opened blinds of the long windows I saw it – standing in the garden, surrounded by the jasmine.

It stood there and watched me, and I stared back. I stared back at the Tall Man, dressed in his suit and tie, but whatever face he had I could not see it. All I saw were the outstretched arms that were too many to count, spindly and crooked like withered branches. Stretching out to me. The blinds closed themselves. I don't think he wanted to be seen. The windmill creaked again from that night on, that clackity-clack playing over and over. And even now that I've moved I still feel like he's there at night, and I keep my blinds closed.

I'll be afraid to open them, because I saw him, and he knows.

(**New York, New York, 6:45pm)**

Detective Keller was a single father trying to raise his daughter in the worst city in the world. He should know, he got to write up reports on the what the scum bags in this city did. He worked from three in the morning until five at night. So the last thing he wanted to come back to was his six year old little girl talking to the women who lived in the apartment across from them. The women reached into her pants pocket and pulled something out and gave it to his little girl. Then just like, she walked back to her apartment and shut the door with out so much as a sound. Detective Keller ran the rest of the way and looked down at his child.

"Daddy, look it what that nice lady gave me!"

"What did she give you, Amy?" Keller asked.

"Alice gave me a necklace!" Amy chirped and held it out for her father, with his fading hairline, to see. Keller grabbed it and looked at it. It was a simple necklace, a lumpy green stone with a hole in the middle, and a silver, gold and black braided string through the middle.

"Why did…Alice give you the necklace, sweetheart?" Keller asked.

"She said it was to make sure the Tall Man didn't get me." Amy said as she reached for the necklace. Keller put it in his pocket and shooed his daughter back into their apartment. He heard the toilet flush and Jill came out of their bathroom. She looked up and then smiled at the two of them.

"Hello, Mr. Keller. Did you have a good day at work?" Jill asked.

"Yes, but did you know that Amy opened the door for one of the many people living on this floor?" He asked her.

Jill looked at him with a look of confusion.

"No one knocked on the door, sir. I swear. I was only in there for three minutes."

"Really? Then how did Amy know how to answer the door?"

"I wanted to open the door, Daddy." Amy spoke up. Jill licked her lips. Keller reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet and gave Jill the twenty bucks.

"Thanks for watching her, Jill. Get home safe." Keller said. Jill took the twenty bucks and thanked him. She locked the door behind her. Keller threw his coat off and walked into the kitchen. Amy ran after his coat and fished inside his pockets for her new necklace. She smiled when she found it.

"What do you want for dinner, sweetheart?" Keller called.

"Mac n' cheese!" Amy called out. She slipped the necklace over her head and watched as the little stone, no bigger than a pebble, land over her heart.

"With mashed potatoes and green beans?"

"EW!" Amy said.

Keller laughed to himself and began to work his magic.

Once dinner was done, and Amy had her shower and out into bed did Keller shut the door behind him and go across the hall. Before he even knocked on the door it opened and Alice looked at him with tired and tentative eyes. He noticed two things when she opened the door. One, that she looked ready to run at any second and that she had two different colored eyes. The left was blue and the right was grey.

"Hello, Mr. Keller." Alice said, her voice was horse and sounded like she had been screaming for hours.

"Hello, Ms…"

"Mar." Alice supplied him with her last name.

"Ms. Mar." Keller said, "Can I ask you why you gave my daughter that necklace?"

Alice licked her lips and then poked her head out and looked down the hall twice before she looked him in the eye.

"The Tall Man is in the building. I don't want anything…bad to happen."

"Bad? In New York? Really?" Keller asked her and folded his arms.

"You don't understand. The Tall Man…he can take them away so fast, that you won't have time to blink before their gone."

"Before whose gone?"

"The children." Alice whispered to him, "He takes them away."

"What does this have to do with the necklace?" Keller snapped at her and Alice flinched. It moved her platinum blonde hair out of her face and he noticed long fingernail scratches on her. It ran from her left temple to her chin. "Alice? Did your husband hurt you?" Keller asked her. Alice smiled at him and laughed.

"I'm not married." She said. "The Tall Man did this to me, a few nights ago. So now I want to make sure nothing bad happens."

Keller looked past her shoulder and into her apartment. It was covered in similar little trinkets like the one she gave Amy. She was even wearing two of them around her neck.

"I put them up this morning." she said.

"Why?" he said as he looked her in the eye.

"So he can't get in." Alice said. "Take my warning to heart, Mr. Keller, so long as Amy wears that necklace, or has it, then he can't touch her. She's safe."

"Safe from what?" Keller asked her.

Alice slowly began to close her door.

"Do you want her face to end up on the missing children board at the local grocery store?" She whispered and then slammed the door shut. Keller pounded on the door for ten minutes, but Alice didn't answer it again.


	2. Mary

**Chapter two:**

Keller got to his desk at three that morning and typed Alice Mar, age 21, into their system. The only thing that she had was a speeding ticket, which had been paid on time. He wanted to find out as much as he could about his neighbor, who didn't seem all there. He looked into her family history. Both parents where retired and living in Florida. Harold and Lidia Mar. Then he saw the name, Mary.

Mary Mar, who was living in the insane asylum only half an hour away from his work place. He clicked on her name. Mary Mar, age 21, had been in and out of asylums for ten years. He raised an eyebrow and closed the window on his computer. He rubbed his face and then sighed. Maybe he should visit her. See if she knows why her sister acts the way she does.

Or maybe she can tell him who the "Tall Man" is. He walks out of his office and to his car. He begins the drive and thinks things over. Alice seemed genuinely scared of this "Tall Man" and her sister, her twin because he noticed their birthdays in the system, maybe Alice had driven Mary to insanity. He began to worry though. What if Alice was crazy and Mary was sane? Then that means that Mary would be crazy too, after ten years in and out of asylums.

He pulled up to the iron gate and he felt like he was entering hell. He rolled down his window and looked at the intercom.

"Do you have an appointment?" asked a gruff voice from somewhere inside the funny farm.

"No. I'm Detective Keller," he held out his badge, "I need to speak with Mary Mar."

Silence. Then the gate opened. He drove through and parked his car. Even from here he could hear the screaming and crying inside. A doctor in a pure white coat was waiting for him at the front door. He walked up to the steps and the doctor, a short man with a bald head and thick glasses, with a name tag that read Dr. Joy, smiled at him.

"Hello, Detective Keller. I must say, this is a surprise."

"I need to speak to Mary." He said.

Doctor Joy smiled and laughed.

"Well, let me show to her room. She has a visitor at the moment."

Keller narrowed his eyes at the doctor and then gagged when he walked in. It smelled like hell, and looked like it too.

"Who?" He asked after he shook to dizziness from himself. He had to breath through his mouth, so he wouldn't have to breath in the nastiness of this place.

"His name is Shiloh McGregor. He comes to visit Mary at least twice a week."

"And her sister?" Keller asked as they passed the insane, some looking so lost, they might as well have been animals.

"Alice? Oh yes, Alice comes to visit often. So came here a few days ago, poor thing looked like she had seen a ghost. It put Mary into a fit, whatever she told her."

Keller didn't comment as they came to an open door and he looked in. A man, with auburn hair and broad shoulders, as sitting at the foot of a bed. He had blue eyes and a scar on his chin. In the bed, chained to it by her wrist, was a very tall and skinny looking women. Her skin was bone white, and her black hair covered her face. She wasn't looking at the man.

"Come on, Mary. It's ok. He can't get you here." the man, Shiloh, told her as he held her thin and boney hands.

"Who? The Tall Man?" Keller asked he walked into the room.

Mary flinched so badly that her head hit the back wall and she began to whimper. Shiloh glared at him.

"Who are you?" he snapped.

"Detective Keller. I need to speak with her." he nodded his head at Mary. Shiloh glared at him. "I need to ask you to leave now." Keller said slowly.

Shiloh slowly got up and kissed Mary on her forehead.

"I'll be back on Friday, okay?" he told her and glared at Keller as he walked out.

He sat in the spot that Shiloh had sat in. Mary had the same shade of grey eyes as her sister did. She looked like some scared rabbit ready to be eaten.

"Mary?" he asked her. She looked at him. "I need to ask you something."

"What?" she asked him. If her wasn't looking at her, he would have though he was talking to Alice.

"Why does Alice wear those necklaces?"

"To keep him away." she answered.

"The Tall Man?" Keller asked and Mary flinched and hit her head again. Keller flinched from the sound it made.

"…Yes. The T-tall Man."

"Who is the Tall Man?" Keller asked and grabbed Mary's head before it hit the wall. She began to cry, silent, the tears slide down her ashen face like water off a window. He began to think that something was going on.

"The Tall Man? He's the monster in my head, the shadow in the background of family photos, the evil living under your bed, the one that takes all the children away."

"Where does he take them Mary?"

"The same place," she whispered, "that he took me."

"Where did he take you?" Keller asked her and he pushed her hair out of her face. She began to sob and Keller let go of her face.

"If I tell you, if I do that, if I allow myself to go back to that place…I'll never come back!" she began to scream and cry and then three men came in. Two held her down and the third pushed him to the door. He stuck a needle into her leg and then she stopped moving.

"I think we need to talk, Detective." Dr. Joy said with a smile. He grabbed Keller by his elbow and dragged him to his office. He shut the door and began to look through his files. He hummed as he did so. Keller took a seat and winched at how hard it was.

"Mary has been here on and off for ten years."

"I know." Keller said.

"Every time she comes back in, she talks in her sleep of this so called "Tall Man" and how he took her away."

"To where?"

"Sometimes it's to wonderland, or to hell. Mostly to hell though. She says that in hell, there is no fire, just cold silence and evil things." Dr. Joy said as he throws her file down onto his desk. "She's a good artist." He opens her file and hands Keller a piece of paper. Keller takes it and looks at it.

A little girl with pigtails in overalls, a long sleeve shirt and red tennis shoes is holding a stick next to a barn, old and rusted. He notices that the only color is the red shoes, and that in the white space to the left of the barn, is a man, tall and dressed in a black business suit, has a sick smile full of razor teeth looking at the little girl. Keller frowns.

"This is Mary?" Keller asks.

"Yes. She went missing about two months after her family moved into their new country home." Dr. Joy says as he opens her file and looks threw some papers. He takes out a few sheets of paper.

"When?"

"Well, according to her mother, she went missing on October 11th , at around three in the morning, and she showed up on their door step, ringing the door bell, on December 11th, at around three in the morning. She was gone for three months."

"Did she start talking about the "Tall Man" then?"

"No. Her mother said that she talked about him only a few days after moving into the house, and when she came back, she went into fits of rage whenever the "Tall Man" was mentioned. By January 15th, Mary was in our care for the first time."

"What did she say about her sister?" Keller asked as he handed the picture back to Dr. Joy.

"Alice? Mary says that Alice saw the "Tall Man" too but never admitted it to their parents." Dr. Joy said as he placed everything back into her file. He folded his hands and looked at Keller. "May I ask why you are so interested in our little Mary?"

"Her sister doesn't seem to be all there." He said and left the office with a slam of the door. He went back to his car and drove back to work. He turned the radio on and sighed.

"In other news today, a little girl, six years old, has been reported missing."

Keller felt his heart stop. Amy was six.

"Amy Wong," the reporter said, Keller felt his heart heave a sigh of relief, "was last seen playing in her back yard with her brother Jaden, only a few hours ago. If you have any information, please contact the police." Keller turned the radio off and focused on the drive back to work. He had to read about this sickos in this city, he didn't want to hear about it as well.

Keller stopped at a red light and began to mull over things in his head. Mary had been kidnapped from her home as a child. She had been for three months, and had been returned at the same time she had been taken. She called her kidnapper the "Tall Man" and all she could draw of him was a faceless man with razor sharp teeth. Her sister, his neighbor, was afraid of the "Tall Man". Keller gripped the steering wheel in an iron grip, his knuckles turned white.

Maybe he should be afraid too.


	3. The Ghost

**Chapter Three: **

I remember when someone else took over the cabin next door. I was seventeen years old, I no longer played outside. They where a nice couple. They had twin girls, who didn't look a thing alike. Their mother was going to have another baby soon. They where always outside, playing. I was nervous though, because they had no pets, the blonde got rashes from animals, and I knew he was still there and I knew he liked to kill things. The windmill still moved. The blonde was the oldest twin, and laughed when I told her about the Tall Man. The dark haired one didn't.

"She can't see him." the younger told me. I told her to be careful. She was. When ever I saw him, she would run to her sister and stay near her. I was… very scared though. Because I could see it in the way he walked now, and how the windmill moved. He was angry at them, at the younger from avoiding him. They stayed for two years and their little sister always cried whenever he was around. Then I heard it, one night in October. October 2nd, I remember. The windmill cracked and I opened my eyes.

The next morning, the rope was burnt and the windmill was in splinters. The twins, the blonde, looked on in wonder, while the younger looked on in fear. The baby wouldn't stop crying. Then I heard the door to the cabin next door open and shut. Their father was a smoker, so it didn't bother me, at first.

After a moment, I realized, there was no rancid smoke that I could smell. I opened my eyes and sat up in bed. Something was wrong. I pulled the curtains back a little and watched as the door opened and the Tall Man carried the younger away. I opened my mouth to scream but he turned and looked right at me. He put one finger to where lips should have been and then he was gone like mist. For three months, the family was worried and scared.

At three something in the morning, pending an exam in physics the next morning in December, I woke up when I heard someone knocking on the door. I pulled the curtains back and saw him, the Tall Man, watching her from the barn, as she waited for someone to open the door. Once it was open and she was inside the Tall Man looked at me again, and I watched as he smiled at me, or what I felt was a smile. My blood ran cold. It still does whenever I think about it. He let her go, he sent her back. She didn't come back on her own.

They moved three months later and I never saw them again. I remember when I looked at the younger she looked me in the eye and I saw something that scared me. I saw the Tall Man in her eyes. Laughing at me. I turned around and he was there, watching them as they left. Two days later, I noticed that he was gone for good. I never understood why. I think he wanted the twins back. I hope he never finds them.

**(Keller Household) **

Keller was up, getting ready for work, when he heard tiny footsteps stop by the bathroom door. He turned around, shaving cream still on his face, and Amy was there, her red hair all up in arms and she held her stuffed rabbit close as she watched him with sleepy eyes. He smiled at her.

"Hey, sweetheart." he said to her, "Did you have a bad dream?"

Amy just looks at him and sniffs.

"There's a girl sleeping under my bed, daddy."

Keller thinks that Amy is still tired, but then he sees it in her eyes. She saw something. Or someone. He goes to her room and lies down on his stomach. Sure enough, he finds a backpack that isn't his daughters. It's old and smells like dust. Someone was here.

He waits and listens very carefully. The floorboards creak near the kitchen. He is up and down the hall in a flash. Sure enough a girl is there, but she looks off. Almost like she was made of the church glass, all dim colors and thin limbs. She is looking around like she's lost, but not because she's in his apartment.

"Hello?" he ask. Her head whips around to look at him, and pure white eyes look back. Dead eyes, like the kind you see in zombie films. She opens her mouth and screams, he can hear it, it's so loud its inside his head. Then just like she is gone. No puff of smoke, no slow fade. It was like she was never there to begin with.

"See? There was a girl in my room. She took Mr. Muffin with her." Amy's voice draws him back to the real world. She is pouting. Mr. Muffin was the stuffed monkey she had on her bed all the time. Never played with or touched. Her favorite toy.

"Do you know who she is?" he ask Amy. She shakes her head no, with a happy smile on her face.

"Alice does!" Amy tells him.

_Of course ALICE does. _He thinks. Alice seemed to know a lot about this fucked up wonder land he stumbled into.


	4. Brooklyn Waters

_**Chapter four**_

_Black water. Cold. He was sinking, choking, drowning. He fought the water but it was everywhere, burning his lungs, freezing his stomach, pulling him down, weighing him down like icy hands. Icy hands. He clawed at them, untangled his arm, his legs, pried them off his face, his head. Free, he swam, broke the surface but still couldn't breathe, struggled to the bank. Mud. He couldn't get out. The water claimed him again and he fought harder, broke the surface again. Digging his fingers into the mud and sparse grass, he dragged himself up onto the stony ground, collapsed coughing, vomiting, water erupting from his mouth and nose. Through the splatter of water on stone, he heard nothing but his lungs wheezing and his heart hammering, but through the darkness, he saw him. The Tall Man. _

Keller woke with a gasp and looked around. He rubbed his face and then noticed something every odd in his room. Something that wasn't right. Someone was sleeping in the bed next to him. He looked to his left, the ghost girl was watching him, and her eyes had some faded color to them. He waited for her to go like she did a week ago, but no such luck. She gulped very loudly in the darkness.

"_Who are you?" _she asked. Keller sighed and shook his head. He was working too hard. There had been a ton of kids missing lately.

"Keller." he answered her.

"_Killer?" _she hissed.

"NO. KEL-ler. Who are you?"

"_Myself." _

"Do you have a name, myself?"

"_I…"_her eyes looked past him and she began to disappear. She was now sitting on the edge of the bed next to him, her back to him. Her hair looked wet. _"Brook…lyn." _she whispered.

"Your name is Brooklyn?"

"_No. I died at the Brooklyn…in the water. I think." _

"You drowned?"

She turned to look at him.

She looked so afraid.

"_HE killed me. He kills them all. Except for the ones he haunts. He tortures them." _

With that she was gone, and the alarm clock was ringing.


	5. Shiloh

**Chapter five**

_Alice heard it some weeks ago. Most people ignored that sound inside their head. The little ringing of fire bells inside your ear. Ghosts made those noises when they screamed. It had woken her up from a dead sleep. She had heard it like an alarm clock, so she knew it was close. Next door, or across the hall. Next door lived an old Asian couple. They where the ones closet to the window, her left. To the right was the fire escape stairs. Across the hall was Keller and Amy. Alice knew it had come from their. _

_She saw the ghost girl, a little lost child who was soaking wet, all the time in the building, looking at each apartment door with such a look of hopelessness that Alice had to look away each time she saw her. But she saw something very bad always after the girl faded away. The shadow of HIM. Alice never looked up. _

_She might have been older, but she was still a victim. He had marked her and Mary. He never got to scare their little sister, Jane. Jane was married with three children. To a lawyer. She was a shrink. She didn't believe in ghost. Mary saw them all the time, and Alice tried very hard not to see them. Then one day it happened, she came home and all of the blockers, all of them, where gone. The Tall Man could enter now. And he did. She wasn't ready for it, but he pushed her. Out of the window, and down into the alley. The dumpster broke her neck. She looked up at his face. Her own image, bloody nose, wide eyes and a shocked expression looked back at her. Alice Mar, age 21, was dead. _

The ghosts open and close the doors. There's no pattern to it, like with other things they do. The routines that live on. He reads by the fire—curled up in one of Bruce's-his big brother- big chairs—thinks of Lois because the silence would have bothered her. The random noises would have done much worse. Here, he doesn't like to move at full speed. Everything is crystal and precious and dusted with memories.

Delicately sculpted brass figurines; priceless rugs from around the world; glass windows both tall and grand make him afraid to do anything more than move as a man. Everything here is as it ever was—even as silent at night as it ever was. Half the time, anyway. When they-the ghost- have nothing to say. Shiloh waits for them to speak first. They never do unless boredom takes hold of them and almost sucks the life from their eternal wandering.

Mary used to chase the ghost through all six levels of the old house. Alice used to as well. But Alice was dead. Mary was locked up. Jane didn't like him. The Tall Man haunted the shadows of their mind until nothing was left. He stops to think of Lois. His big sister. Logan was his nephew. Logan had a daughter-two of them- Brooklyn and Vivian. Brook and Vivi. Vivi was in a coma, from falling off the Brooklyn bridge and into the ice water below.

Vivi believed in ghost, and in the stories Mary and Alice used to tell her. She was afraid of The Tall Man. Or as she liked to call him, The Operator. When he asked her why, she would laugh and not never tell him. Alice and Mary where convinced that The Tall Man had put her into a coma. Brook was less than angry at this.

"_SHE WAS A CLUMSY KID!" _she screamed at them, her grey eyes murky with tears. Shiloh never told them otherwise, and never told Brook the stories. The ghosts whisper in the house and he listens with a half an ear. They never talk of things worth remembering. Old things.

"_Did you find the earring?"_

"_Look old bean! That book they've been looking for!_

"_I say, another dead fish? The child would be better off raising a rock!" _Shiloh never listens long. Except when he hears Vivi's voice.

"_I saw him. He came out of nowhere. He pushed me in." _

Shiloh notices now, as he turns the page, that his little Vivi is back.

"_He is near Mr. Keller. He killed Alice. He took over a man's body, the old man next door, and tore away the blockers. He killed Alice. He pushed her down the rabbit hole into hell." _

Shiloh decides to visit Mary tomorrow, and Vivi, and Detective Keller at his work place. And also to go place flowers on Alice's grave. He wonders if he should bring the red roses or the Queen Ann Lace flowers.

"Why not both?" he ask the ghost aloud.

The all begin to give their opinion on the matter at hand.


End file.
